How to Build a Service Strategy for Your Business

The more efficiently a professional services team can deliver a service, the better it is for their clients and the service provider. That’s where service strategy comes into play as it helps these businesses thrive.

First, let’s define a service strategy and why it’s important to build one. Then we’ll explore when to create it and how to build an effective one. Finally, we’ll show who should use one and provide links to a few free templates to help a company’s service management.

What Is a Service Strategy?

A service strategy refers to a comprehensive plan or approach that outlines how an organization delivers, manages and optimizes its services to meet customer needs and business objectives. The strategy isn’t limited to operational aspects but includes a holistic approach to aligning services with long-term goals, ensuring continuous improvement and maintaining high-quality standards.

For professional services, which typically involve specialized expertise, such as consulting, legal services, marketing, financial advising and more, a service strategy becomes even more critical because the delivery of these services is often highly customized and involves directed client interaction.

Once a service strategy has been established, the next step is to implement it across the company. That requires project management software. ProjectManager is award-winning project and portfolio management software that has robust Gantt charts to make visual schedules for the execution of services that can be shared across departments.

Better still, the Gantt chart is equipped with features to link all four types of task dependencies to avoid delays and cost overruns that can cut into profit margins and upset clients. There’s also a filter for critical path analysis, which identifies essential tasks that must be completed to deliver the project successfully, without having to do complex calculations. Then, set a baseline to track progress in real time to ensure projects align with the service strategy.

ProjectManager's Gantt chart with filter — ProjectManager has Gantt charts to implement the service strategy. Learn more

Why Is It Important to Build a Service Strategy?

A service strategy impacts the success and sustainability of an organization, particularly in industries that rely heavily on service delivery, such as professional services, IT, consulting, etc. For one, it helps to align with the organization’s broader business objectives. By providing a clear direction for how service can contribute to those goals, an organization is more likely to meet them.

A strategic approach helps ensure that services are designed and delivered in a way that meets or exceeds customer expectations. By understanding customer needs, preferences and pain points, organizations can tailor their services to provide better value, leading to higher levels of satisfaction and loyalty.

A service strategy also helps to streamline processes and allocate resources effectively. It ensures the organization has the right capabilities, processes and technologies in place to deliver services efficiently. This can lead to reduced costs, faster delivery times and more consistent quality, which enhances customer satisfaction and profitability.

Other reasons that a service strategy is beneficial include driving competitive advantage by differentiating an organization from its competitors. It can also facilitate growth and scalability by identifying opportunities for expanding service offerings. All of this also increases profitability by defining pricing models, optimizing resource usage and mitigating risk.

When to Create a Service Strategy

Now that we understand what a service strategy is and why an organization would want to create one, let’s look at how it can help out at various points in the life cycle of a business or service offering.

At the start of the business or service offering
When expanding or diversifying services
When entering new markets
When facing increased competition
When adapting to industry changes or trends
When improving or optimizing service delivery
When seeking to scale the business
During a major organizational change
When client needs evolve
After a period of stagnation or declining performance
When implementing a digital transformation

How to Build an Effective Service Strategy

Writing a service strategy requires a structured approach that aligns one’s services with business goals, meets customer needs and ensures operational efficiency. To achieve this, follow the steps outlined below.

1. Identify Target Customers & Assess Their Pain Points, Needs and Wants

Begin by segmenting the market into distinct customer groups based on characteristics like industry, company size, demographics, behavior, location, etc. Develop profiles of one’s ideal customers, called personas, to represent different types of customers being targeted.

Understand customers’ pain points by interviewing them, using surveys, polls, industry reports and competitor analysis. Once there is a deep understanding of the target audience’s pain points, assess their needs, which is what is needed to overcome those challenges. Also, define their wants, or the additional benefits or features they would prefer.

2. Make a Customer Journey Map to Understand How Users Interact with Your Service

With the target audience and personas created in the first step, it’s time to define the stages of the customer journey. It’s divided into key stages that represent the different touchpoints a customer has with the service. These stages are generally defined as awareness, consideration, decision, onboarding, service delivery, support, post-service feedback and retention.

Once those stages have been defined, create a visual customer journey map. It should capture each touchpoint, customer emotions, pain points and opportunities for improvement. Then, analyze and optimize the journey, focusing on service design, customer support, onboarding and retention strategies. The customer journey should be monitored and refined as needed.

3. Make a Service Blueprint to Identify Key Touchpoints & Resource Requirements

A service blueprint is a visual representation of the service process, including the customer journey, service interactions and behind-the-scenes operations that enable the service to be delivered. It helps businesses map out how a service is provided from start to finish and ensures all aspects are considered in a strategic plan.

The service blueprint has several key components including customer actions, frontstage (visible contact employee actions), backstage (invisible contact employee actions), support processes and physical evidence. Key touchpoints include initial awareness of the service, the first interaction with the service, ongoing support and final service delivery. Resource requirements to deliver the service are also defined.

4. Analyze Direct Competitors and Create a Value Proposition to Differentiate Your Business from Them

To differentiate your business, it’s critical to analyze the competitive landscape. This involves understanding competitors’ offerings, strengths and weaknesses. This leads to how one can offer something better or different, helping carve out a unique position in the market.

Once that’s done, create a value proposition that highlights what sets the company’s service apart. This clear, concise statement explains the unique value of a service to customers and why it’s a better choice than the competition. It identifies customer needs and pain points, highlights unique features, quantifies the benefits and focuses on emotional and functional value.

5. Establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to Ensure Service Quality

Using KPIs track service performance against defined objectives, align team efforts with company goals, identify issues early, take corrective action and maintain customer satisfaction and loyalty. These can be customer satisfaction, net promoter score, first response time, service level agreement compliance, customer effect score, customer retention rate and more.

Once KPIs are established, monitor them and report on the performance of each regularly. Analyze trends over time and identify areas for improvement. Assign ownership of specific KPIs to relevant employees or teams. KPIs can help organizations continually improve service and ensure the quality of that service.

6. Assemble a Customer Service Team and Establish Channels of Communication

When creating a customer service team clearly define roles and responsibilities. Ensure the team has the skills necessary to meet the service strategy goals. If hiring, prioritize candidates with strong interpersonal skills, patience and a customer-centric mindset. Regular training is essential to align the team with the organization’s service values, processes and product updates.

Multiple communication channels should be established to cater to customer preferences and ensure support is available. Key communication channels include phone support, email support, live chat, social media, self-service through FAQs, a knowledge base and chatbots, in-person support if applicable, text support and video support. Communication guidelines should be set to define response time, tone, language, escalation process, etc.

7. Gather Feedback to Improve Customer Experience

Customer feedback helps to understand the customer experience and identify areas for improvement. There are various ways to get feedback, whether through customer surveys, net promoter scores, customer interviews, customer support feedback, listening to social media, reading online reviews and ratings, usability testing and focus groups.

8. Implement Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Strategies for Building Customer Loyalty

A well-executed CRM strategy helps foster meaningful, personalized customer relationships, ultimately improving retention, satisfaction and advocacy. To do this, begin with customer segmentation and leverage CRM technology for personalization. Be sure to offer exceptional customer service and loyalty programs and solicit and act on customer feedback. Remember to engage with customers regularly through email campaigns, exclusive events, etc., and monitor and measure customer loyalty.

Who Should Participate in the Process of Creating a Service Strategy?

Creating a service strategy is a collaborative process that requires input from multiple stakeholders across the organization. The participation of key individuals or teams helps ensure the strategy is comprehensive, aligned with business goals and feasible to implement. Here’s a list of those who should participate in creating a service strategy.

Executive leadership and senior management
Customer service, support team
Service management teams
Operations managers
Marketing team
Sales team
Operations and logistics team
Human resources team
IT, technology team
Finance team
Product development, design team, if applicable
Legal and compliance team
Customer insights, analytics team
External consultants or industry experts
Customers via feedback or advisory panels

Related Service Management Templates

To help with the service strategy process, use these free service management templates that can be downloaded from our site. They’re only a few of the more than 100 free project management templates for Excel and Word that address all aspects of managing a project across multiple industries.

Service Report Template

A service report details the work that has been done by the service provider during the delivery of that service. Use this free service report template for Word to help service providers track changes, show where performance can be improved and identify areas for cost reduction.

Service Proposal Template

Use this free service proposal template to capture the information that a service provider and client need to discuss and eventually agree on before getting into a legally binding contract. This template will allow them to hash out the details.

Service Blueprint Template

Making a service blueprint is part of the service strategy process. This free service blueprint template for Excel will help service providers improve service quality, customer satisfaction and communication between the service provider and customers.

How ProjectManager Helps Service Providers

The service strategy is just an idea until it’s implemented. Once that strategy has been decided upon, project management software is going to execute it, manage it and track if it’s performing as designed. This is essential to deliver on its promise while monitoring and adjusting as necessary. ProjectManager is award-winning project and portfolio management software that has Gantt charts to schedule the tasks of the service strategy and track their progress to make sure deadlines are met.

Assign Tasks to Team Members With Multiple Work Management Tools

Once the service strategy has been scheduled, teams can execute their work on multiple project views. That means that different departments that work together can choose the tool that best suits them while collaborating with cross-functional teams. For example, teams that work more iteratively can choose the visual workflow of kanban boards to manage their backlog and collaborate on sprints. Others can choose powerful task lists that can prioritize, log hours and more. Stakeholders get an overview of progress on the calendar view. And all views update in real time so everyone is on the same page.

Monitor Costs with Timesheets, Dashboards and Reports

To ensure that cost overruns are identified and resolved quickly, managers must monitor costs in real time. They can do this by getting a high-level view of the project or projects with dashboards for one or multiple projects. These collect live data and display the data on easy-to-read graphs and charts that show costs, but also time, workload and more. Customizable reports on variance, timesheets, workload and more can be filtered to focus on costs. Plus, secure timesheets do more than let teams log hours and invoice clients. They provide a window into labor costs.